Essay Sample on How Filmmakers Can Push Our Buttons Emotionally

Introduction

People have numerous experiences in life, and most filmmakers tend to produce films that relate to the real and actual life, with the current activities and political events that might be happening in a country, to be highly marketable. Moreover, the filmmakers use varying techniques to achieve the process of capturing the emotions of the audience. Therefore, the paper is premised on a discussion on how the filmmakers can push our buttons emotionally.

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One way that the filmmakers perceive emotion in a film is through the mirror rule process which states that it is a good idea to mimic the visual input that one is seeing. For instance, if a person walks up to somebody and they smile at them, it is good to smile back. Also, if one sees a person in the theatre and there is a smiling face that is filling the screen, there is a probability that most of the audience will pop a little bit of a smile (Aurier and Guergana n.p). Thus, when people smile, they tend to feel happier, and when they frown, they tend to feel angrier. Therefore, the combination of emotion reading by the brain and the mirror rule off the body's current state is enough to produce emotion.

Additionally, in film, a filmmaker can integrate those things very tightly such that he or she can control what is shown of the face and something else that is present. However, the person viewing the film has less opportunity to focus on other things or walk away (Aurier and Guergana n.p). Every person has got a facial mirroring which causes their faces to wind up in a sad pose, and which evokes a sad emotion. Having identified a character in a film and one is reasoning the fact that the character might be sad produces an empathetic sadness. Moreover, music plays a great role in film and emotion. The sad movies often have slow minor-key music at the points that they are trying to make the audience cry (Aurier and Guergana n.p). Different people encounter minor key music in real life; they see people cry due to the bad things happening to them that makes them feel sad. However, in a movie, those things can be cranked up to 11. Situations that are most upsetting can be set up and put in a film that plays sad music. Therefore, combining all these things takes the real-life mechanism encounter and pushes all the buttons emotionally at once (Aurier and Guergana n.p).

Another way in which filmmakers push the buttons of the audience emotionally is through the success rule. The rule states that when one is confronted with stimuli, they perform behaviors that usually produce good outcomes responding to a similar stimulus in the past. For instance, in the past, when a looming object has been perceived, it means that something is coming at the head of a person and the best thing to do would be to duck (Braudy n.p). It is baked in evolutionary, and one is forced to do what worked for them in the past. The main principle in this scenario that the filmmakers use is that they take a range of stimulation that most people have experienced in their natural life and exaggerated it. It is intuitive that when one is emoting, crying or smiling, they might have a large effect on the person close to them rather than a face in a crowd (Braudy n.p). For example, in most cases when someone starts crying in the process of interacting with other people and gets too intense, then the people involved will tend to look away. But in a film, someone can break down and keep close-up on their face, have them twenty feet tall staring at the person crying. Filmmakers will do that to tug to the heartstrings of the audience. Thus, what the filmmakers are doing is exaggerating the facial aspect way outside the range that the audience would experience in real life (Braudy n.p).

Emotion refers to "disturbance" and the characters who reside in their thoughts and mind than in their emotions and body often put some distance between the audience and the story. Thoughts and dialogues can lie at times, but emotions are always universal, humanizing and relatable as they tell the truth. Most people in real life can handle themselves when things run well or work in their favor (Bartsch 270). But when a disaster, roadblock or conflict is thrown in, they find out who they truly are. The same principle applies to stories. Readers and moviegoers also want to take part in the dramatic stories to learn how the characters respond emotionally immediately things turn to be challenging, messy and stressful. Telling of stories involves more than the lining up the pieces of action, concluding arranging them in a logical order. The actions of drama often pull the moviegoers to the edge of their seats making them be hooked with tension, curiosity, conflict, and suspense (Bartsch 269). However, no matter how exciting the action might be, the emotional development and reactions of the character provide fascination and any depiction with a strong element of human increases the chances of audience identification.

Additionally, in a storyline that is compelling, the characters change and grow step by step due to the dramatic action and the growth is not meant to be on a physical level. In most cases, the zeal of showing off their high-tech special effects, writers and moviemakers forget the power of emotional development in character: the problems that a character faces must affect the audience emotionally and the deeper, the better (Bartsch 268). Therefore, the use of a scene tracker would be an effective way to keep track of the incremental steps as it fulfils several essential elements in each scene.

In character emotional development, every story often sends a character on an outer journey that makes the audience undergo an inner transformation. Moreover, an emotional development implies a permanent growth or a transformation that is long-term in the reactions of the character to the dramatic action scene-by-scene throughout the entire story (Bartsch 268). Nevertheless, as the dramatic action affects the emotional development, the action too affects the emotional state of the audience at the scene level - the mood of the audience changes in a scene reacting to what has been said or done in the specific scene. The action of drama occurs in every scene which causes an emotional effect on the audience (Bartsch 272). Therefore, emotional change depicts the emotional reactions of the audience in the scene at the scene level only.

Nonetheless, the identification of the audience with the characters in a story is a way in which filmmakers capture the emotions of the audience. Stories that are successful subliminally invite the audience to participate with the main characters of the movie mentally. During darkness in the theatre, 95% of people's sensory receptions are always tuned into the visuals and sound of the movie (Bihl n.p). They find themselves "in the story" and at times help characters to make decisions, such that they root for them when they make the right decisions and cringe when they fail to do so. In this way, filmmakers use different ways to get the audience to connect with the ongoing story.

First, they use physical suturing as a technique in pushing the buttons emotionally. This action consists of employing sound and camera techniques to attract the audience in the movie physically. For instance, the audience sees things that the protagonist sees over the shoulder shots or with a point of view shots (Bihl n.p). There are also long wide takes in stimulating the audience in the room and watching from a distance. The long extreme close-ups of a character also allow them to ponder a decision or situation along with the character. Second, the filmmakers use the technique of emotional suturing, and they emotionally suture the audience to the story through the creation of situations and characters that generate jeopardy, sympathy, and relatability. Most people are often drawn to attractive characters who are powerful, charming, skilled, funny, beautiful and hospitable. When the filmmakers create characters with such attributes, it makes the audience want to be close to and identify with them (Bihl n.p). This action is a purely emotional reaction that is based on the outward appearance and behavior of the character.

Third, the moral suturing technique is also implied and at the core of every movie that is successful, is a conflict of values that were chosen universally to be understood by the audience. The conflict of values describes what the film is about. Also, the conflict of value engages the people watching at a heart or value level by allowing the viewers to identify with various involved characters and assisting them to decide on what moral choices to make. Therefore, moral suturing, cannot be considered as a passive experience, but an active rooting experience and decision making (Bihl n.p). Additionally, a moral suturing that is successful takes place easily with a story and writing structuring technique known as "The Moral Premise," that describes the main values around which conflict is produced by the story. The action is because all the conflict and physical action begin as decisions that are psychological which are derived from the moral values of the involved character (Bihl n.p). Thus, the Moral Premise Statement is a statement or sentence which illustrates that natural consequences of an actor or actress choosing a vice vs. a virtue as motivation for pursuit of a goal. For example, many films that are referred to as "good" pit the selfishness of the antagonist against that of the protagonist. Or, maybe the conflict of values is generosity vs. greed or respect vs. prejudice.

Conclusion

In conclusion, different filmmakers use varying techniques in capturing the emotions of the audience depending on the play or film that is being viewed. Some filmmakers use the mirror and success rule to win the emotions of the audience while other use the suturing technique to draw the attention of most viewers. The mentioned suturing techniques are emotional, physical and moral suturing that helps the audience understand the story of a film and also help the filmmakers to attract more audience.

Works Cited

Aurier, Philippe, and Guergana Guintcheva. "The Dynamics of Emotions in Movie Consumption: A Spectator-Centred Approach." International Journal of Arts Management 17.2 (2015). Retrieved from www.academia.edu/download/36427924/Vol1721_Aurier_Guintcheva.pdfBartsch, A.

"Emotional gratification in entertainment experience: Why viewers of movies and television series find it rewarding to experience emotions." Media Psychology, 15(3),267-302. doi:10.1080/15213269.2012.693811 (2012). Retrieved from https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/20483032.pdf

Bihl, Erik. "The captivating use of silence in the film: How silence affects the emotional aspect of cinema." (2017). Retrieved from http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1114407/FULLTEXT02

Braudy, Leo. The world in a frame: What we see in films. University of Chicago Press, 2002. Retrieved from academic.uprm.edu/mleonard/theorydocs/readings/Braudy.pdf